The Historical Development of Media in Unconquered Africa

Abstract

Research on the history of media is a ‘patchy’ area in Sub Saharan Africa. The existing research works on African media history focused on a single country or else on sub regional contexts. The same is true in the Ethiopia context. A lot of things has contributed for this, one of which; the practice of journalism in the country is being in its infancy stage and scholars in the field as well. Due to this factor, the Ethiopian media history remained without comprehensive and rigorous literature in the area. That being said, the following questions were not properly addressed through empirical researches: ‘how media developed in Ethiopia?’ or ‘how they operated in the traditional Ethiopian society?’ or ‘how they are functioning today?’ hence, this study attempts to fill this apparent paucity of knowledge on Ethiopia media history by providing an informative and accessible accounts.